Girah - scammer

Seems like a very fishy coverup instead of a scam, what do you guys think?

His "revelation" about being this prodigy
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...se-poker-prodigy-990495/index123.html

Heres the thread where he gets caught and he posts his apology lol
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...nl-players-30-000-hsnl-xpost-1079435/



Backstory:
- Girah posts sick graphs, gets love, respect and some doubts in 2p2 community
- Jungleman, Sauce123, Dogishead vouches for him
- Inconsistencies, and seeming over-promotion for this guy from said HS guys, sparks doubts then subsequent detective work by 2p2 bustos
- Story gets called out by a couple guys, HS guys defend them in the most obvious and retardedly suspicious manner
- Suspicion grows stronger as it appears it was a fake account in Portugal, for Euro site play by HS guys
- HS guys stop talking about it, tarnishes their reputation a bit
- Suddenly a 30kusd shitty scam story appears, calls out Girah being the culprit, Girah admits to it like 1 minute later
- Jungleman/dogishead/sauce makes posts distancing themselves from him, saying they are cancelling moving in with him in Portugal(lol)
- Most people hate the scam, a lot think theres more to it involving some shitty coverup by Jungle, sauce, dogishead
... thread is about to explode there


Poll: WTF is up with this whole saga?
(Vote): Terrible cover-up by HS life fish
(Vote): Straight up scam by Girah
(Vote): Jungleman/Sauce were also victims of deception

Every step of this story absolutely stinks, not sure if that means girah is fake or what the christ is going on though. I can't help get the feeling that a small lie has been turning into a bigger and bigger one to cover up more and more rough edges. I mean scamming people in a very stupid oversimplistic way for relatively tiny sums just isn't adding up.

Too bad I really liked his video and was hoping to see more

Goodbye Girah.

The question if 'being able to play under multiple accounts at ipoker at Pokerstatic hotseat and conceal his identity brought his some advantages' seems so hilarious right now, as is his answer 'maybe a bit'

so he is both a poker prodigy and a scammer? This all seems very fishy to me. And why would he pay back his victims double. kid is either very weak or its made up.
But no matter how the story twists it seems like he is a scumbag.

o_O

On August 07 2011 04:44 Oly wrote: Every step of this story absolutely stinks, not sure if that means girah is fake or what the christ is going on though. I can't help get the feeling that a small lie has been turning into a bigger and bigger one to cover up more and more rough edges. I mean scamming people in a very stupid oversimplistic way for relatively tiny sums just isn't adding up.

I agree, it seems like it was a level thats just spiraled out of control.

Hes been disqualified from the Lock promotion he was playing in because someone else logged into his account to play from a different location - this was apparently his 'backer'
lol @ being HU prodigy and sponsored lock pro and having a backer
double lol @ letting them log in to play on your account.

No one can be that dumb.

I imagine it would be quite simple to manufacture a "poker legend" with the collusion of a few high stakes pros. Just get a few HSP pros to vouch and chip dump to a random guy and suddenly you have a well respected high stakes player that has won millions. Imagine if you could pay Ivey $5 million under the table and then he comes on FTP to "lose" $5 million to you. You would be an internet legend even though you've won nothing. Ivey could charge a vig and open up a business.

Ive been looking at this for like 20 min and still have no idea wtf is going on...

Hi 2p2, I’m a 6m and HU player on iPoker by the username of “jajay1963”. I met José in a strategy skype group which was set up by TooCuriousso1 to discuss HU strategy amongst good players.

José’s strategy contributions to this group were exceptional, and many top players were very impressed. Early in July, José created a second group which he said was for the best players to further discuss strategy, review each others videos and do some live sweats, to discuss hands just after they had happened. José and everyone elses’ strategy discussion continued to be very good and in early July, somewhere around the 10th, Joséwatched 2p2 poster ImFromSweden whilst he played a session. During this session IFS played sauron1989 HU on iPoker. IFS lost just over $10,000 in 70 hands of $10/$20 but both of them typed into the skype chat group that they thought that this sauron1989 was very bad. About 10 days later, José offered to watch me whilst I played a session on iPoker. Thinking that this was a good opportunity for me to have my play reviewed by a top player, I agreed and he watched my session start out as a 6max session but soon I had sat with sauron1989 on an empty 6max table, after José had told me that this guy was bad and spewy and proceeded to lose a total of $21,900 to sauron1989 over the course of 2 matches at $25/$50. I felt like something was wrong during the matches, not a feeling I can explain, but it just didn’t feel like any other HU match I’ve played and I got suspicious.

After reviewing the skype chat logs, it became fairly clear that José was massively pushing this sauron1989 to anybody who had iPoker funds, saying that he was very bad and that everyone should play him (and let him watch when they did). I voiced my concerns to TooCuriousso1 and we proceeded to work hard to dig up evidence to prove this. Lots of circumstantial evidence was available; José’s chat logs were extremely suspect, where he would push players to play sauron1989 despite not seeming to play him himself. We soon witnessed that whenever José would disconnect from skype, sauron1989 would sign out of the ipoker lobby and would sign back in when José reconnected to skype. This happened 3 times in 20 minutes and all 3 times both José’s skype and sauron logged out and in at the same time. During our attempts to find more evidence, it became clear that José was also operating under the username of dollarman223 on the Merge network. He scammed TooCuriousso1 for $900 and appeared to be setting up another member of the group for a further scam at $50/$100, which we anticipated would be his biggest scam. Once we voiced our concerns to the rest of the group it became apparent that José was setting up quite a few of them for a scam.

Obviously it was naiive and stupid of me and of the others to allow José to watch our screen whilst we played high stakes, but based on a few months of internet friendship and the great strategy José posted, we believed he was entirely trustworthy (despite the scepticism voiced in José’s NVG thread).

To José’s credit, before we had fully conclusive proof, though our suspicions were becoming apparent, he confessed what he had done, and promised to pay us back all of the money plus was adamant that he would pay compensation for the time that we had been forced to put in to unearth the cheating. We have been promised reimbursement for the money stolen by Jose while superusing. Once I receive the funds, I will then send IFS and TC what they are owed.

We have co-ordinated this with José to allow him to write his statement in here for all to read. His statement will be posted below.

edit: regarding the confession, we received a full admission of guilt at a point at which it was more or less apparent that we already knew we had been cheated.







Girah's explanation:


I'm going to be taking a break for a while. There is no right or wrong way to say any of this, so I'm just going to say what happened.


A while ago, I did something stupid. A friend of mine, who I introduced to poker, made a suggestion to me which was, I'm not going to sugar coat it, cheating. I had introduced this friend to poker and he was losing money, badly. He asked to play some of my poker friends and said why don't you sweat them and we'll see their hands. I don't know why I agreed. I don't know why I did it. I guess it was a mixture of guilt and stupidity and feeling ****ty for getting him involved in something which seemed to be bad for him.

This went on for a short while but I felt so bad, I had to say something. I confessed. I told the guys involved what I had done, I told my friends and the people who I respect and who respected me.

I told my Mum, confessed everything to her. I could see the disappointment moving across her face as she told me she was not proud of me despite all my success in poker; she was not proud of her son. She said how she hadn't raised me this way and what had poker done to me. Thats when it hit me, how badly I had let people down. I felt ashamed, I had no explanation; explanations don't cut it in situations like this and often come across as excuses.

There is a quote on the wall in my school which I always see as I pass the nurse's office. It says that the real mistake is not tripping up, but staying down. I thought of that and that's why I'm writing this.

I'm holding my hands up and taking whatever consequences come. I realise the severity of this, but I also realise that I have to take responsibility for my actions and so I'm paying back everyone involved and in addition paying them compensation of $30,000. I've also told my sponsor etc and whatever happens there I will take the consequences too. They have been really amazing to me and I've enjoyed every minute of working with them. Representing Lock and being part of their amazing team, witnessing the incredible growth, was a pleasure and an honor.

I'm young, I made a mistake and I hope that this doesn't define me; I hope that how I deal with this and move forward is the thing that does. And people will say I have no excuse and I know and understand that. I agree. I just want to let everyone know, I'm sorry. I apologise to the guys who lost their money, the people who I love and care about and I have disappointed and the guys in the poker world who have supported me for letting them down. I wish Ish I had something to say to you all, to say to my parents and my friends and all of those who thought I could do no wrong.

Again I'm really sorry.

Whatever the truth is, I always respect the hustle.

On August 07 2011 06:38 blackjacki2 wrote: I imagine it would be quite simple to manufacture a "poker legend" with the collusion of a few high stakes pros. Just get a few HSP pros to vouch and chip dump to a random guy and suddenly you have a well respected high stakes player that has won millions. Imagine if you could pay Ivey $5 million under the table and then he comes on FTP to "lose" $5 million to you. You would be an internet legend even though you've won nothing. Ivey could charge a vig and open up a business.

Well, it depends on people staking their reputation on certain individuals - and its pretty much a lock that anyone willing to pay get some rep. has sinister motives.

This whole thing reflects very poorly on those who vouched for him.

lol that thread is hilarious, more and more people coming in that he scammed

[01:25:17] josé maria macedo: stop thinking so much about your reps
[01:25:20] josé maria macedo: and think about mine
[01:25:22] josé maria macedo: for one second
[16:00:16] josé maria macedo: i assume you all know this
[16:00:24] josé maria macedo: but if it goes public, both mysponsors are dropping me
[16:02:45] XXXXX: yeah they're aware
[16:03:16] josé maria macedo: ah, really?
[16:03:20] josé maria macedo: damn
[16:05:28] josé maria macedo: theyreally know that both sponsors will drop me?
[16:05:35] josé maria macedo: and still want to?


Also, one of his scam accounts on iPoker was 'IfonlYouKnew' xD

tldr!

this whole thing struck me as extremely odd and shady from the beginning. new high stakes player shows up in NVG thread and half of 2p2 oddly seems to hop on his nuts. cates/dog/sauce act like somehow they have inside info that hes awesome. the guy has no reasonable credentials other than the word of sauce/dog, and then suddenly hes a scammer and they all make 1 sentence posts being like omg were not freinds anymore how could he ever do this!

so shady. and sauce/cates/dog keep saying theyve talked poker with him and its obvious he thinks about the game well? either theyre huge idiots on life heaters or they have to know this kid cant lpay at anything approaching their level (or a winning midstake player level for that matter, given the apparent actual truth)

something really doesn't add up here...

so were Jman and Dogishead living with him at the time this happened? If so thats super shady, if not, one can excuse their ignorance imo.

aggravating

He's acting like paying people back + 30k is punishment enough. He should have his entire bank account seized, the funds should be redistributed to everyone he's played against, and he should be going to jail.

This is so fucking weird now that numerous others are saying he scammed them; it's like a spot where no value hands or bluffs make sense. My current theory, which makes as little sense as anything else but just for fun is:

Jose was paid by jungle/sauce/pitf as a shill to allow them to multiaccount and play on euro sites as originally suspected, he then used the reputation he gained to go mad scamming on his own for small sums because he wasn't actually making that much himself.

If anyone lays me 10-1 on this version I'll put a few hundo on it...

Then in October last year, something really messed up happened to me. I was taken advantage of by someone close to me. They cheated me for a large sum of money – about $250,000. Although I don’t want to write too much about the details, it was really screwed up. At first I was just shocked that this could happen - I was 17 and probably a little naive, but I couldn’t imagine that a person could do such a thing to someone they cared about. But as time passed, I started to feel angry. Angry at all of the hard-earned money that I had lost. In my mind I felt abused. I lost faith in people. I started questioning my friends, my family, even my girlfriend and, as I felt worse and worse, my poker results started to flounder. I just felt ****ed over... by life and by poker.

lol this guy is ruthless

What doesn't make sense to me after reading the entire thread this morning is: how did no one notice that he wasn't a "prodigy" after coaching and mentoring him? If he was such a successful player, then randomly doing something like this would be complete madness and pretty far fetched